


Ad astra per aspera

by Astrea (phoenicids), Protea (phoenicids)



Series: Gladnis Week [1]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Day 1, Day 1 Prompt, Domestic Fluff, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Slice of Life, Slow Burn, and i fucking mean slow burn dude wtf, cute shit, did i just made that stupid tag up, domestic angst, im bad at tags?, im just goin hogwild in these here tags, prompt: tattoo
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-05
Updated: 2017-12-07
Packaged: 2019-02-10 18:51:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12918063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phoenicids/pseuds/Astrea, https://archiveofourown.org/users/phoenicids/pseuds/Protea
Summary: Their dinners are a promised thing, a coming together of Sword and Shield to reflect on their roles, their charge, the world at large, and (perhaps more furtively) each other. Until Gladio reneges without a word. Jilted, Ignis finds Gladio at his home to confront him, only to be met with a nostalgic surprise and a profession written directly into Gladio's skin.





	1. Tattoo

**Author's Note:**

> Canon Divergent AU where the events of main game happen a year later. 
> 
> Day 1 Prompt: Tattoo

The kitchen was filled with the earthy scent of occidental spices, Ignis’s own meticulous blend of herbs de Provence that crusted beautifully upon the prime rib and the accompanying fork-fluted pan-roasted potatoes already nearing perfection in the oven. The cabernet he’d chosen to pair with it was already chilled and sat on the counter, artfully arranged in Ignis’s favorite wine bucket. From the restored Victrola out in the living room, a long playing record spun, dulcet voices like a descant above the entire scene, women singing in close harmonies over a lively big band arrangement. 

Gladio had gotten that vintage contraption for him for his birthday, the phonograph restored to meticulous detail, of Gladio’s commission. “Nothing beats the sound of analog recordings,” he’d insisted. Said there was a warmth to them, a depth that lost in digital. Even went out of his way to procure a small collection of bossa nova records he thought he’d liked, which weren’t quite Gladio’s style, but he’d presented them with such enthusiasm that it would have been unconscionable not to give them the old college try. For the most part, they’d been pleasant enough, innocuous melodies that made for good background music during his ritual morning coffee preparation, or while he made dinner. 

But tonight, the music of the hour was the copy of some encouraging tune regarding apple trees that sounded like vague threats sweetened with the dulcet tones of three female voices in incomparable harmony. It was the good, upbeat stuff that kept his spirits high as he finished the preparations for dinner, running through his checklist as he whistled along. 

The knock came at the door, some jaunty, syncopated thing, and in his haste, Ignis failed to process the unusual pattern. “Coming,” he called, even as he opened the door, to two pairs of feet decidedly lighter in their footfalls than Gladio’s. 

“Hey, hope you don’t mind having us again this week,” Prompto said with more cheer than was usual in his signature over-enthusiastic way. “Gladio asked us to stop by. Said you’d be waiting for him, and he felt bad cancelling. Said you’d probably feed us if we came fast enough!” A circumspect pause, and Prompto spoke again, this time less certainly. “Is that okay?”

Ignis frowned, but tried not to look too displeased. He did, of course, adore the company of Noctis and Prompto, and enjoyed having them over for dinner as often as they liked to come, but this had been the night of the week dedicated to Gladio’s company, wherein the Sword and Shield might have a moment to focalize on their tasks, their progresses, their hindrances, the Prince, and whatever else they might worry over in their offices. 

Nevermind that Ignis had spent all week researching a recipe he was sure Gladio would enjoy, if only to impress him a little. It was perhaps vanity, on his part, to relish in Gladio’s epicurean delight in his cooking. Noctis was not particularly vocal for the few foods he did enjoy of Ignis’s making, and Prompto was so enthusiastically grateful for everything he got to eat that wasn’t some convenience store prepack that it was difficult to gain any satisfaction from his praise. But his disturbing admiration for Cup Noodles notwithstanding, Gladio did boast a surprisingly refined palate and an appreciation for his cooking that was as thoughtful as it was touchingly genuine. 

But that was all a moot point in light of the fact Gladio did not come. No call, no text, not so much as a ‘by your leave,’ and Ignis was more disappointed (and a little hurt), than he was angry. “Naturally,” Ignis answered belatedly, adjusting his glasses (needlessly, it was a force of habit), and joining them in the dining room, where he finished dinner arrangements.

Dinner went by as easily as ever, though the lack of Gladio’s presence was a little too obvious for his liking. No dark bass laughing low at Prompto’s stories, no warm hand at his back when he cleared the dishes, preceding an assurance murmured too close to his ear that he’ll ‘take care of it.’ It nagged at him enough that he interrupted a particularly lively story of Prompto’s, as he rinsed the plates in the kitchen sink. “Did Gladio make mention of why he couldn’t come?” he asked, the strain evident in the inquisitive lilt in his voice. “It’s unlike him, not to give me notice.”

Though Ignis could not see the, he was sure Prompto and Noctis were currently exchanging conspiratorially nervous looks in the tense silence that followed. “He sounded like he was in a rush,” Noctis said at last, and Ignis was sure that it was a tactical move on their part, to mollify Ignis’ perceived hurt with the unquestionable edict of the prince. “Didn’t really say.”

It worked, at least. Ignis only nodded, bowed his head, and finished doing the stack of dishes in a contemplative, brooding silence. 

——

Gladio’s fingertips toyed long the spines of his LP covers with a deliberation whose circumspection was a pointless formality. He would choose the same record to begin the night as he’d chosen every Friday night for as long he could remember: a copy of his favorite Andrews Sisters album, something buoyant and lively to brighten the empty apartment as well as the neighboring ones on each side that would no doubt be subjected to his particularly spirited taste in music.

He pulled the vellum sleeve out from the jacket, handling the worn record carefully by the edges of the disc before setting it within the electronic Victrola replica. Gladio had only just lowered the needle when he heard the sharp rap on his door, and went to answer it. 

Ignis stood in the hallway, in his ubiquitously crisp suit, no glasses, his walking stick already folded under his arm. Gladio had balked at the sight of him, if only because it was so unexpected to see him there. “What are you doing here?” Gladio asked in a soft wonderment, quickly realizing it might have come off as accusatory. 

“Is it an inconvenient time?” Ignis asked, before Gladio could amend himself.

“No, god, no, never an inconvenient time,” he assured him, fumbling stupidly for a response in his surprise. “Come in.”

Ignis had crossed the threshold himself, but allowed the hand at the small of his back guide him through Gladio’s apartment, to the living room that smelled of pumpkin spice and fresh coffee. “I was afraid I might have caught you unawares, perhaps,” he explained, taking a seat on Gladio’s sofa. “You might have had company.” 

“Nah,” Gladio replied dismissively, and Ignis heard his retreating steps as he stepped into the kitchen area. “What company’s more important than yours, anyways?”

“I wasn’t sure,” Ignis answered, a dubiousness lingering ominously in his words, in spite of the swell of warmth in his chest at the offhanded way Gladio always seemed to reassure him. “Whatever company prevents you from attending a weekly visit, without even a call afterwards explaining yourself. A girl, maybe. A date?”

Gladio laughed a little too loud, a little too awkwardly. “No, ah … no.” 

The implication hurt a little. Gladio had made little secret of his more than platonic admiration for Ignis, though the latter preferred to keep things professional between them. Gladio had always respected that, to the best he could, but even Noctis made the occasional comment from time to time. That he was a little too concerned about Ignis. That he was a little too invested. That a blind man could figure out Gladio was stupid over him, and seeing as how that was exactly Ignis’s affliction, he should probably cool it on that note. (He never did.)

Barring any real answer or any desire to complicate things further with an explanation as to why that was so patently incorrect, Gladio changed the subject. “It’s good you stopped by, though,” Gladio asserted brightly. “Actually, before I forget, I’ve been meaning to get this back to you.”

In the black credenza off to the side, Gladio retrieved a fabric-bound notebook, its corners rounded and worn with age, but nevertheless in very good shape. “Here. You probably don’t even remember lending it to me. I think I’ve probably had it ….. Five years now? At least? You definitely gave it to me after Crownsguard.”

Ignis accepted the notebook with an expression of confusion mixed with consternation. His hand passed over the cover, noting the fine weave of the binding, the gold lettering in the faceplate that denoted it his: Ignis. “Is this what I think it is?”

“Your sketch book, yeah,” Gladio replied, sounding a little proud. “I found it sandwiched between some old novels I’d dug up last week. It was funny. I had some weird hair up my ass to re-read that series I was crazy about when we were in high school. You remember? That one about the military company caught in the immolation of Ishgard? Man, I was obsessed. Had half the books memorized. Anyways, while I was perusing, I found—” He gestured. “This.”

A pleased grin fought hard not to curl at the corners of Ignis’s mouth as he worried the worn point of the lower corner with his thumb. “Why in the world would you keep this?”

Gladio paused, but only for a moment. “Because it’s yours,” he said naturally. 

Ignis ignored that, the casual devastation, in spite of a blush that colored the tips of his ears. “I was rubbish at it. Not that I had any leisure to improve myself.”

“Now you’re just being hard on yourself,” Gladio chastised him lightly, and Ignis could feel the displacement of his weight as he took a seat beside him on the couch. “I know you’re deflecting because you’re modest like that. But you had a lot of natural talent, actually. A real eye for proportions. And for color, too. You had this way of making everything look … I dunno, graceful. Like every curve was delicate. Like you drew it with so much care, but it still managed to look effortless. If that makes sense. A purposeful beauty. At least, that’s what I got from it. I don’t know a lot about art. Only what I like and don’t like.” He paused, frowned. “I’m probably not explaining myself well.” 

There it was, that assessment that always felt like a compliment. But compliments were sometimes hollow, and superficially meant. Never the way Gladio delivered them. “No, no, I know what you mean,” Ignis said softly, a little bashful over the litany of praises. “I just never knew you appreciated them so much.”

“You know which one of your drawings was my favorite?” Gladio asked amiably.

Ignis knew immediately. “The gladiolus.”

“Yeah,” he laughed, ducking his head and hiding a grin that Ignis could hear in the resonance of his voice. “Makes me sound conceited, doesn’t it? Like you drew that for me. But it is. My favorite, I mean.”

“But I did draw it for you,” was Ignis’s matter of fact response.

“Yeah, but only because I asked you, didn’t I?” Gladio pointed out. “You were drawing flowers for everyone. Some pretty thing for Noctis— what was it? Forget me nots? Wisteria or something for the king, something else for the butler, even … I know I walked in on a few maids bent over your shoulder looking. I got a little jealous and asked you to draw something for me.”

“You asked me to draw my favorite,” Ignis reminded him gently. “So I did.”

“Ah.” And Gladio was dumbstruck, for the second time. But it was a comfortable silence between them. Something sweet and charged, with an energy that felt soft and frenetic under the skin, prickling at the hairs at the backs of their necks, like hackles raised in anticipation of something. “I noticed it was the only one you’d colored in that book. You usually watercolor them don’t you?” 

“Mm,” was Ignis’s wordless confirmation. “And that wasn’t a coincidence, either.” He didn’t need to see the stupefaction in Gladio’s face to know he wore it. 

The clock struck a metronomic clip in the pregnant pause between them. Ignis waited for Gladio to speak, and in light of his inelection (or inability) to do so, Ignis changed the subject. “You never told me why you didn’t come.”

“Oh!” Gladio laughed, a note of relief in the high, breathlessness of his laugh. “I got a new tattoo. A slot opened up with my artist, and I took it. Would have had to wait another six months if I didn’t.”

“Is that all?” Ignis chuckled, amused. “You could have told me. I would have understood that. The whole affair felt so hush-hush, I was convinced it was some clandestine thing I wasn’t meant to know about.”

“Well,” Gladio said, and Ignis could feel the shift in the cushions as he leaned in, the closing proximity of his voice, the marine notes of his cologne wafting stronger as he did. “I wanted it to be a surprise.”

“Oh?” Ignis swallowed hard, sure he was about to hear something momentous, and not quite sure he was prepared for it. “Why?” 

“It was kinda special for me,” Gladio replied, a little vaguely, but not without an enigmatic brightness to his tone. “Speaking of which. Now that I’ve got you here, would you mind if I beg a favor of you?”

“Me?” 

Ignis felt Gladio’s weight shift, a low groan emanate from his chest as he reached for something behind them. “Remember when I got my crow piece? I was miserable, itching all over. You were the only one who I trusted to put the ointment on my back for me. I don’t know what it was about you. You had this way of rubbing in the lotion just hard enough so it felt like relief, but never so hard it hurt or irritated. Like some Midas touch for tattoo scars. I was kinda hoping you might be willing to recapitulate that horror with me. If you wanted to.”

Ignis laughed lightly, as one might do to an indulgent child. “Of course. Hand me the cream. Where did you get them? What location, I mean.”

Gladio shifted closer, their knees brushing lightly, and Ignis moved his legs reflexively out of the way. “My forearms,” Gladio replied, holding his arms out for the taking. “Wrist to just below my elbow. They twist around, just a warning.”

The ointment in his hands, Ignis started at the base of his thick wrists, where what appeared to be a stem of some sort began within a bed of sharp, blade-like leaves. His fingertips followed the ridges of the scar, up the stalk, carefully noting the bursts of sequential blooms following the twine of the stalk. “A gladiolus,” Ignis murmured, his brows drawn in an expression of consternation. 

“Yeah,” Gladio affirmed, through a nervous, breathless laugh. “Your gladiolus.”

Ignis’ flinched at the attribution, a shiver of ineludible and unprecedented thrill at the thought. Instinctively, he knew exactly Gladio’s meaning: the flower, and not his name. But still, the unintentional implication of Gladio belonging to him was strange, sitting amorphic and anomalous on his skin like new-worn sweater, unfamiliar but not unpleasant. But that prickling of pleasure was ushered from the forefront of his mind as his fingers traced and retraced the wounded skin, half in wonder, half in a desperate measure to commit them to memory, to map their remembrance as accurately as he could with assiduous fingers that ached to know every nuance of his scars. In a week, they would be gone, with not even cicatrices to mark their ghosts. Ignis understood implicitly that this was an ephemeral moment, meant to be understood in this rare sliver of time, shared with him with a singular purpose that did not elude him, no matter how adamantly he wanted to avoid it.

This was meant for him. 

“What’s this little notch here?” Ignis asked, the pad of his thumb worrying at a peculiar outcropping by a petal that seemed too angular to belong. 

“Dunno,” Gladio answered truthfully. “It looked like a mistake or something. Like something you’d erased, so I’m not quite sure.”

“And you kept it in?”

Gladio shrugged. “Yeah, why not?” 

“It’s a flaw, Gladio, meant to be erased,” Ignis admonished him, with all the pithiness one embodies when spouting aphorisms. 

“I thought it gave it character,” he explained, in that simplistic way of his. “Perfection’s for the gods, Iggy. Even masterpieces have flaws. Beethoven’s Ninth. The Sistine Chapel. Even—”  
Gladio’s diatribe trailed off as he lifted his hand to brush the backs of his knuckles against the evened scarring at Ignis’s temple. 

“Don’t,” Ignis warned weakly, grasping Gladio’s thick wrist in two hands and pushing it down. 

“Sorry,” Gladio whispered, letting his hand fall away. “I didn’t mean … sorry, I just got caught up— …. I thought we—”

“Why did you make them curl around?” Ignis asked abruptly, changing the subject with a curtness that dared defiance. It was a question asked hurriedly, in a firm desperation to forget the lingering sweetness he’d left between them. Ignis’s voice sounded brittle in his mind, a little broken, but without sharpness. “Gladiolus grow straight, don’t they? Like blades.”

“Oh, yeah,” Gladio replied, sounding a little bashful. Unsure of himself. “I read somewhere that ancient druids tattooed snakes to their forearms, both as an affirmation of their faith and for talismanic purposes. The snakes were hallowed, believed to keep harm from the wearers who merited them. I kinda liked the idea, adapted it for myself. Like goodwill written in my skin.”

“And you chose my flowers,” Ignis said in summation, a question phrased as a statement.

“Yeah,” Gladio replied softly. “There’s a … it’s a law of sympathetic magic. Called the law of contagion. It says that effigies or likenesses of things imitative of a person carries their spirit. I liked that. Like I carried you with me, like a credo. Not like I have some weird, superstitious idea you’d keep me from harm. But I like the remembrancer. Like a reminder of what I fight for, and whom. Because what’s a Shield without a Sword? We were meant to—”

And without another thought to the logic of reservation, Ignis surged forward to connect their lips in a heedless kiss. So heedless it was instantly regretted, and Ignis broke away with a frown. And just as the apology formed on his lips—

“Hey,” Gladio said softly. “You kissed me.”

Was it an idiotic observation of the obvious? Was he mocking him? Ignis couldn’t tell. “Yes. I did,” he said, his tone a little clipped in defensive confusion. “Astute of you.” 

There was a moment of contemplative silence in which Ignis wondered if Gladio took it badly. “Can I kiss you?” Gladio asked at last, and Ignis’ eyes flickered in an agitated perplexion, wishing he could see the honest amber he remembered in his mind’s eye, the circumspect softness he always loved about him. 

Ignis nodded, and Gladio’s broad hand cupped his cheek, the heel of his hand couching just under his sharp jaw, tilting his head up to better meet the quiet, tentative kiss Gladio laid upon them. It would be dramatic, to say Ignis melted into the kiss like some Harlequin romance novel heroine, but it was precisely how he’d felt when he folded against him, Gladio’s arm hooking around him to hold him close, to anchor him to his chest and never let him go. He wanted to sink into his marred skin, to live holy and adored there, sanctified in Gladio’s regard, until he remembered he already did.

Ignis broke from the kiss, reaching to unwind the heavy arm from around his waist, to press a kiss to his scarred palm. “I never took you as a romantic,” he murmured wistfully.

Gladio watched the press of Ignis’ lips with a fascination too earnest to try hiding. “Curse of the Amicitia men,” Gladio quipped lamely, his throat gone dry with the claimant need to kiss him again. But he stopped himself, cognizant of the impetuousness of the moment, not wanting to make or say anything sudden that might send Ignis to beat a hasty retreat. “We’re all sensitive-like, I guess, to balance out being inveterate hard-asses.”

Ignis laughed bemusedly by the joke, pressing his cheek into the palm of Gladio’s hand. “Should I get one, too? A tattoo, I mean. Of my own.”

Gladio grinned up at him somewhat dubiously, an amatory inattention in the way he gazed up at him, as lovestruck as a boy. “Sure, why not? I can help you pick one out. Something classy. I can, um—” He swallowed hard. “I could help you figure out where to …”

“Why don’t you do one better?” Ignis asked, lowering Gladio’s hand, letting it fall away as his own hands now smoothed over the broad bow of his shoulders, his fingers interlacing just at the nape of his thick neck. The slightest pull and Gladio followed, letting Ignis guide him closer. Ignis’ lips parted to breathe softly along the line of his jaw. “Mark me yourself.” 

The invitation had hardly left his lips and Gladio was upon him, his kisses claimant with the desperation of one who knew that every moment measured by a heart’s beat was precious and never promised. In a second, he could change his mind, remember the hesitation he’d espoused when Gladio had first confessed his feelings, an admission rendered inert as Ignis had laid a hand on his heart and solemnly intoned a simple and unelucidated “Don’t.”

But there was no hesitation in the way their lips met, like two halves always meant to be a whole, or the pass of his slender fingers through the thick of Gladio’s dark hair. And still Gladio pulled back, his forehead pressed to Ignis’s temple as he panted against his jaw. “Are you sure?” he asked, his fingers clamping over Ignis’s in a silent plea not to let go. “I want to be sure you’re sure.”

Ignis pressed a kiss to the point of his jaw, just below his ear. “As sure as you are,” he replied, and Gladio let out a strangled sigh like relief, his kisses renewing their ardent offensive. 

“I’m going to love you too much,” Gladio sighed into the hollow of his throat, his lips tracing a line of kisses along the jut of his collarbone, over the lithe fabric of his shirt. “I know I will.”

Ignis’s head tipped back to bear his neck to him in silent invitation. “You’ll love me surely and honestly,” Ignis predicted, his voice soft with the tender earnestness of his assurance. “As surely as the conviction that spurred you to wear your heart … quite literally on your sleeves. I know you too well to doubt that you mean things with no less than your full heart. And I want you to know that I welcome this … progression … with no less certainty than you.” His arms encircled his shoulders, pulling him yet closer, until their chests abutted, two heartbeats hammering a syncopated rhythm that soon fell in step with each other in a symbiosis that felt as natural as breathing. “I’ll love you, too. Wait for me until then.” 

Gladio said nothing, only nodded his understanding, his teeth sinking into the breadth of Ignis’s shoulder, as he marked the first of a constellation he’d leave that night. “Don’t promise what you don’t have control over,” he implored, half dizzy at the familiar fraicheur of citron and vetiver that scented Ignis’s skin. “This is enough. For the rest of my life, this much would be enough. We’ll take it slow. We’ll take our time. I’m not asking for anything more than that.”

“Very well,” Ignis agreed, with something like relief spreading through his chest, like a weight freed. “I’ll agree to that much. But there’s a prescience in my bones I can’t deny. I’m going to fall in love with you. There’s no helping that. You’ve left me little choice, you see. And I no longer have the will or desire to deny that.”

He felt Gladio limpen, all of a sudden accosted with the full weight of him nearly crushing him whole, but only for a moment until he remembered himself. “Then I’ll look forward to watching you fall,” he laughed, falling back upon the opposite arm of the sofa and pulling ignis atop him. For safety’s sake. 

“As I have,” Ignis rejoined, his lips sucking a mark into the soft flesh beneath the hard line of his jaw. “There. We’re even now.”

“Not yet,” Gladio corrected lightly, his hands wandering boldly up the lengths of his slender thighs. “But we will be.”


	2. Wearing each other's clothes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An argument about clothes becomes an examination into the nature of their relationship.

He’d been talking about the baseball game all week. Not just talking. Enthusing. Lineup changes and last minute trades, spouting off a litany of statistics about cumulative ERAs and some philosophical diatribe about the Designated Hitting rule that went on for probably far longer than it should have, encouraged by lips loosened with a few beers and Ignis’s bemused epistemological inquiries. 

Ignis had done his best to support Gladio’s interests by researching appropriate sports fan fare for such an occasion, taste-tested and kid-approved by none other than the resident ‘plebeian,’ Prompto: sourdough soft pretzels, buffalo chicken mini pizzas, the ubiquitous hot dog dressed with some ungodly topping of sauerkraut and onions that sounded so unappetizing that he'd insisted on making it himself from scratch, to ensure it wasn't imported from the bowels of hell. He’d even made a point to research enough for at least a cursory knowledge of the game, but he found he preferred hearing Gladio speak of it himself, listening to the lilt and candor in his voice as he did so. 

“So are you saying you’re for or against the Designated Hitter?” he asked, reaching for a serving tray at the top of Gladio’s cabinet. “I can’t be sure, they way you enumerate your pros and cons. You’re a fan of the Crown City Crests, aren’t you? They’re in the Caelum League, which does, if I remember correctly, allow for the DH within the lineup? Though I have heard you speak highly of the Lestallum Lights, who are in the Lucis League, and do not. Statistically speaking, don’t teams belonging to the Caelum League boast higher RBIs than those of Lucis? So why would anyone be against it? It seems only beneficial.”

“First of all, that’s just unfair of you, talking baseball while wearing my Crests jersey,” Gladio said with a shake of his head, pointing his beer bottle at him like an erstwhile threat. “One or the other, but those in tandem is sort of ruining me right now, if I’m perfectly honest.” 

From the open counter of the kitchen, Ignis smiled as he arranged some pigs-in-a-blanket on the serving platter. A little smugly, if Gladio surmised correctly. “Prompto assured me I looked quite dashing,” he informed him.

“Shit on the Six, yeah, you do,” Gladio agreed, raising his beer in toast to the fact, and taking a generous swig of it for good measure. “But. Returning to your question: I can see both sides of the coin here. DHs make for a more dynamic game, overall. I mean, who wants to see a pitcher struggling through the bottom of an inning, when he was posturing like a goddamn hero at the top of it? At the same time, I like the cohesion of the same nine men on the field. It feels like a real team that way, not like you’re bringing in a ringer. Which is exactly what a DH is.”

“Ah,” Ignis replied, in that sage way of his, espousing that exaggerated interest with which one might indulge a child. 

“Am I boring you?” Gladio asked, half joking and a little nervous he’d hear that he was. “I know baseball isn’t your thing.”

“On the contrary, I find your passion for it quite interesting,” Ignis assured him smoothly, walking a plate of food over, along with two longneck bottles of craft beer. Even if I don’t quite understand the particulars of your argument fully.”

He’d almost memorized Gladio’s apartment to a tee. Forty-five degree angle from the kitchen counter, six steps towards the lamp light before he’d hit the coffee table, and then it was just a matter of finding the corner of it to round and take his seat beside Gladio. 

“I never did get into baseball,” Ignis continued, settling himself beside Gladio and letting his heavy arm drape over his slender shoulders and pull him close. “Though, I did enjoy football for a time.” 

“Football,” Gladio repeated, and the disbelief was apparent, even in the flat of his delivery. “What, seriously?”

“Mm,” he affirmed wordlessly, swallowing down a mouthful of the bitter brew. “I think it was expected that I would find the systematicity of statistics interesting. But there’s a fair amount of strategy involved in football that I prefer. I believe someone once referred to it as the thinking man’s game. It appealed to me.”

Gladio nodded pensively. “I mean, it’s true. For all your lineup plans and pitching changes and whatever else, there’s no strategy that can be implemented until you hit that ball. And then it’s a team effort to see you home. Or keep the other team from it. A lot is luck, some of it chance. I can see football appealing to you. It’s like chess. But with people. Large people.” Gladio squinted. “You don’t have a type, do you?”

Ignis laughed, ducking his head to ignore the question with another sip of his beer. “I don’t think I’ve enough practical experience for you to deduce any pattern of behavior concerning what my type is. But yes. It did appeal to me. I used to sit in the library and read stratagem manuals thicker than phone books. Sometimes, when I rented them out, I’d fall asleep with them on my chest and wake up in the middle of the night thinking I was suffering some asthma attack.”

Gladio laughed and kissed him indulgently on the cheek. It was then that he happened to notice a bright red spot of sauerkraut on his chest. “Here,” he said, grabbing a handful of napkins and daubing it at the stain. “You’ve got red on you.”

“Do I?” Ignis asked, at once worried and touching his chest to discern the worst of it. 

“Right here,” Gladio replied, still working the stain. “I think I’ve got all of it.”

“My apologies,” Ignis said soberly—more soberly than the occasion demanded— putting down his plate and standing to brush the crumbs of hot dog buns from the front of his shirt. “I should change before I stain it further.”

“I don't have any more jerseys for you to look cute in,” Gladio called as he watched Ignis shuffle away towards his bedroom, staring with unabashed appreciation of his backside.

And though Ignis could not see, he was well-aware of the certainty of those eyes trained on him. “Then I shall have to go naked,” he announced grandly as he went to root through his dresser anyways, a pleased grin hidden with the turn of his head.

Ordinarily, Gladio wouldn’t have hesitated to say something suggestive, something along the lines of complimenting his stellar ass or just wordlessly hooting his approval, like the neanderthal everyone purported him to be. But the subject had awoken a particularly sore spot for him that had been nagging at him for weeks. “Or you could just …. keep a change of clothes over here,” he offered, a little quietly, maybe a little sullenly.

Within Gladio’s room, Ignis had the momentous benefit of obscurity during which Gladio could not see his face, could not watch the growing degree of disconcert that knit his brow with every passing second. 

Ignis paused, and outside, for Gladio, the silence loomed. “Nonsense,” Ignis said with a hollow, counterfeit ease. “I wouldn’t dream of impinging upon your personal space.”

“Impinging— what?” Gladio almost spluttered, setting down his beer as he leaned forward to plant his elbows onto his knees, straining to see within his room to glean some sort of understanding of Ignis’s enigmatic statement. “What are you talking about? We’ve been dating for a month now. I think that warrants some latitude into my life.”

“Dating?” Ignis asked archly, the repetition buying him a moment of reprieve in which he might weigh his answers in spite of the harrowing tide of his racing heartbeat drowning the sound of his own thoughts. He was on tenuous ground here, and he knew it. He emerged from his bedroom in a soft, worn T-shirt that hung loose over his frame. 

“Yeah,” Gladio replied sourly.

“Is that what this is?” As if the concept was a foreign one to him.

It was incontestably clear how Ignis’ attempts at lightheartedness were not as easily received as he’d hoped they would be. Gladio’s voice dropped to a low menace, belying the cold misery that twisted in his stomach at the way Ignis wanted to dismiss … whatever it was they had together. “Generally, when you spend as much time as possible with each other and sometimes sleep together— yeah, that’s what dating is,” Gladio pointed out, bitterness edging his tone. “Though, dating would would imply we’d go out. On dates. In public.” A beat. “Like we’re not afraid. Or ashamed, maybe.”

He’d expected Ignis’s hesitancy. It had taken him this long just to convince him to date him, it would stand to reason that he wouldn’t exactly jump headfirst into things. But what he hadn’t expected was his resistance. 

“We don’t sleep together,” Ignis corrected, ignoring the rest of what Gladio had said, and the latter was near beside himself with hurt.

Gladio wasn’t a stranger to bullshit said in the heat of the moment—he’d gotten himself in trouble on more occasions than he’d cared to count in his younger, reckless years— and tried to slow the maddening pace of his heart, the bile on his tongue that threatened barbed words meant to sting and singe. “No, we don’t, not in any sense of the word,” Gladio agreed, his tone clipped. 

And it was true. They hadn’t. Every night that Ignis deigned to spend at his had been spent in hours of furious communion of mouths employed in drawing dizzying ecliptics down the line of each other’s throats, feverish hands that mapped expanses of silken skin and twisted sinew, sought desperately for Ignis’s release as Gladio spoke words meant with the sweetest of intentions, delivered in poesy awkward upon his lips. But Gladio had been careful never to broach the topic of sex proper. “I thought it was important,” Gladio went on, his voice pitched low to preclude the waver of hurt in his voice. “That you knew that I was serious about you. I know your reservations. I know you don’t want to rush things. I don’t want to rush things either. But I didn’t expect to feel like I’m the only one in this.” 

Ignis said nothing, leaning a little helplessly against the doorframe, haunting the threshold of the room in which they’d only just untangled themselves from last nights chaste lovemaking. The sigh of displeasure he let out had translated into one of irritation to Gladio’s ears, and in the latter’s oversensitive state, it rang hollow in his chest, echoed by the full, desperate thrum of a heartbeat racing to stave off the surely-advancing ache portended in the charged air. 

“Can’t even deny it a little, huh?” Gladio asked, and the plaintiveness of the question was unmistakeable. 

Ignis made a point not to sigh again, not to utter any sound or word that Gladio might take ill, quietly padding over on bare feet to slip into easily into his wide lap. “Do you really think I don’t care about this?” he asked, his fingers threading affectionately through the wisps of hair at his temple, stroking the shorn stubble there.

Gladio welcomed the weight of him there, quietly losing his mind over the rare display of audacious affection, but his stubbornness still heavy in his chest, clinging to the fine filaments of bitterness that purled around his ribs. “Hard to say.”

Ignis nodded his understanding, considered, and then spoke. “There are things I love about you, as you are. There are things I have always loved about you. We’ve known each other for so long. But there are things I love about you now that are difficult for me not to lose myself over. 

I love that you look at me like a dock worker might eye a woman of ill repute. Don’t laugh, I mean it. I don’t think I’ve ever been desired the way you desire me. I don’t think I’ve felt desired before. I’ve always been aware of your eyes on me, Gladio, don’t think you’re subtle. I can tell— even blind— the expressions you wear: the sound of a grin pulling at your mouth, the way your voice turns a little dark when you frown. I can see every expression, cataloged in the back of my mind, and recalled sometimes startling clarity from so many years of marking your every whim and whimsy. Perhaps I regret it a little now, that I’ve waited too long, that I can no longer witness them, now that I might appreciate them with a different awareness.”

The silence that fell between them felt weighted, and Ignis tipped forward to touch their foreheads together, the points of their noses brushing affectionately. “I love that no matter how boldly you look at me, that in that room, you touch me like a consecrated thing, like I’m whole and holy, and I have never felt so adored in all my life.”

Ignis breathed a sigh as soft as a kiss against his Gladio’s lips. “I’ve never wanted anything for myself, you see. And I do now. Selfishly. I’ve never thought of myself as separate from the duty of my office. I’ve always lived like some tintype of a real person, vacant of any consideration of myself. And now, here I am, exploring what it means to want for the first time in all my life. And so I am, as you could understand, a little wary. Of myself, not of you.” 

Gladio seemed to relax at that, the taut of his shoulders loosening under Ignis’ smoothing hands. “I don’t want to fall in love with the way you make me feel. I don’t want to fall in love with pretty words or sensations or sex. This is new to me, all of this, in ways it’s not so new to you. And therein lies my hesitancy. I want to be sure that when I tell you that I love you, I mean it. Without equivocation.” He kissed him softly, daring at last to do so with his final words. “I’m sorry, Gladio.”

Gladio let himself be kissed without making a move to reciprocate, but his arms circled Ignis’s waist the moment he broke heedfully from the kiss, crushing him to his chest as he buried his nose into the curve of his shoulder, breathing in the scent of his skin intermingled with the bloom of his freshly-laundered shirt, and wondered if that was what home smelled like. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled meaningfully into the fabric of his shirt. “I’m sorry I want too much of you. I’m sorry I want everything, everything, and that I’m impatient. I’m trying not to be, I am. I don’t want to overwhelm you, really I don’t—” 

Ignis stopped his mouth with a kiss, followed by another that graced the peak of his cheekbone. “I know,” he assured him quietly. “I know. But I was remiss in not letting you know my mind. That was a fault of mine I readily admit to. One of those considerations I have yet to learn that comes with understanding someone else’s feelings, in veins heretofore unfamiliar to me. Be patient with me, I beg you. I’ll never intend to harm you, I can promise you at least that.”

“Nothing worth having ever comes easy,” Gladio said, turning his head press a kiss to the delicate hollow of his cheek. “I’ll be patient. I’ll wait, of course I will. I’ve waited decades for you, I’d wait decades more if you told me to.” He refrained from the declaration of vows Ignis was not ready to reciprocate, nodding as he repeated, “I’ll wait.” 

Ignis kissed him, a light, quick thing laid upon his cheek, as he took up Gladio’s heavy hand and led him to the room, to the eruption of sonorous cheers from the baseball game on the television, already forgotten. “One of these days, you should spend the night at mine,” Ignis mused, falling back on Gladio’s plush bed and pulling him by the shirtfront down to follow. 

“Yeah? Invite me over,” Gladio countered, settling easily between his thighs, his hands finding Ignis’ to twine their fingers as close as vines, his mouth already latched to the curve of his shoulder. 

Ignis arched to meet the press of his broad chest, his arms draped easily around his neck as he tilted his chin up to offer more of his throat to be kissed. “I could dress you, then,” he went on, his breath hitching with flick of Gladio’s tongue against his skin. “Outfit you in something pristine and proper, like a gentleman. Have you ever worn formal attire? I don’t think I recall you in anything outside untidy school uniforms and hooded sweaters when we were younger. It would be a fascinating prospect, I think.”

“What’s wrong with the way I dress?” Gladio laughed, unoffended. “And I used to wear a uniform for guard duties, remember?” 

“That’s right!” Ignis exclaimed, grinning wide at the memory of Gladio in his staid uniform. “Those were nothing so sartorially impressive.” He grinned wickedly. “Or perhaps it was you who was the unimpressive one.”

“Hey—” Gladio objected, and Ignis ameliorated his offense with his a kiss.

“You do dress as though you’re allergic to shirts,” Ignis pointed out, and Gladio bit his shoulder. “That was uncalled for, you brute.”

“Unfortunately, you’ve discovered my devastating affliction.” Gladio admitted through a long, theatrical sigh. “I’m allergic to shirts. How did you know. But that also means—” He plucked at Ignis’s shirt. “Off.” 

Ignis gave a little insincere groan of protest and pulled the shirt up over his head before settling back down with a brow quirked in defiant question. “Better?”

Gladio had been hovering over him, now slipping to press himself to Ignis’ side, a hand laid heavy just below his navel. “I’m allergic to these, too,” Gladio informed him, tugging lightly at his belt loops and giving a few paltry coughs in demonstration of his newfound affliction, to Ignis’s deepening frown. 

“I’ll wait on the doctor’s note on that one,” Ignis decided, and Gladio fell upon him with a low, rumbling laugh.

“That’s fine,” Gladio said, settling on his chest, his head tucked beneath Ignis’s chin, his arms circling his waist. “I’ll wait.”

Ignis kissed the crown of his dark hair, his hands resting the broad bow of his back. “I know you will.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my aesthetic is Gladio hitting on Ignis like a dudebro, sue me


	3. Gladio and Ignis get tricked by Prompto and Noct into going on a date

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gladio and Ignis get tricked by Prompto and Noct into going on a date. A bad time is had by all.

“What if we went to—”

“Don’t say Dorsia,” Ignis snapped, his hand immediately clamped over Gladio’s mouth to preclude the possibility that he would. 

The two held a tense moment, sat tangled on Gladio’s couch, the metronomic tick-tock of the clock on the wall marking the moments during which Gladio watched for every nuance of displeasure in Ignis’s face, aimed very pointedly at him. When finally the silence had dragged on too long, sure that Gladio would comply, Ignis had raised a brow in menacing question before letting his hand fall away from its occupation.

“Why not Dorsia?” Gladio blurted out, as soon as he was free to, and precisely because he was not at liberty to. “I’ve heard you mention their menu more than once. And that whole—” He gestured frantically here. “Just kinda seems like your scene.”

Plans for their six month anniversary always started with enthusiastic intentions to make arrangements, but often devolved into half-hearted suggestions of restaurant venues, which then turned into somewhat heated discussions of little relevance to their topic at hand, and ultimately resulted in no decision made. Exhaustion on Ignis’s part was sometimes to blame, or hungry irritation on Gladio’s, genuine inability to think of any passable suggestion in the moment, or sometimes the distraction of each others’ lips or hands or suggestive whispers that ended in decidedly unproductive exploits. And the closer they came to the date, the more distinct the tension of expectation grew, the more desperate the need to finally hammer something out. 

Ignis gave a sharp sigh of irritation. “Firstly, it would be impossible to make a reservation this close to the date—”

Gladio’s face screwed up in disbelief. “You don’t think we can’t pull a few strings? As Crownsguard?”

“Secondly,” Ignis continued loudly, ignoring his question as though it were too absurd to acknowledge (it wasn’t, entirely). “I believe they, as a reputable establishment, would have a strict ‘No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service’ policy in place that I’m sure you’ll flout spectacularly, so I rather don’t see the point.” 

Gladio threw up his hands in exasperation, slumping petulantly down into the cushions of his sofa. “Gods, I’d put on a proper shirt if we went somewhere nice, Ignis. I’m not a caveman.” 

“Tell me that next time we make love,” Ignis quipped flatly, without missing a beat. 

Gladio sat bolt upright, a facetious menace to his voice. “That’s it! We’re broken up for the rest of the day,” proclaimed, smacking a pillow for emphasis. “Tryn’a be productive here, there is no need to be giving me the business …” 

It had been a half a year now, spent together in an impossible idyll between them. There were times it seemed to them that they were so comfortable around each other they might have been together for years. Other times when the novelty still surprised them, caught them unawares, left them stupid and giddy like they were the boys they once were when they first fell in love. 

In spite of Gladio’s enthusiasm to espouse all the commonplace conceits of dating (dinner dates and movie nights, the pride of being able to publically call Ignis his own, emphasised by the occasional but healthy smattering of some truly repulsive overwrought public displays of affection), he’d come to terms with Ignis’s preference for secrecy in the matter, and eventually came to prefer it. No one meddling, not having to worry about anyone else’s opinions on their private relationship, no scrutiny under watchful eyes that inhibited and undermined them. Was it wise, for the Sword and Shield to commiserate? Would it compromise their commitment, their devotion to their offices, to Noctis? Questions that had every right to be posited, given the significance of their jobs, but unnecessary and unpleasant to address, in both their estimations. It was nice, therefore, having something that was clandestine and private, and all their own. So they kept it that way.

Keeping it a secret from Noctis and Prompto had been difficult, though, as neither of them were the sort to have any proclivity for deception. But it became a sort of poorly-played game to them, wherein Gladio would slip and say something suggestive, which Ignis would then have to shut down, and the two would have to pretend to be mad at each other. Ignis would sometimes be so convincing that he’d need to spend a fair amount of time petting the bewildered Gladio later that night. Ignis, therefore, was adept in the art of soothing Gladio’s hurt feelings, a skill which he utilized now, with dazzling aplomb.

“Broken up for the rest of the day?” Ignis repeated as though he had never before heard anything so appalling. His hands found Gladio’s shoulders like an anchor, and he slipped neatly into his lap. “I disagree.”

Gladio’s knee had begun to bounce with impatience, and he turned his face away to avoid the sight of Ignis’s face, which would surely compromise the resolve of his protest. “What do you mean, you disagree? There's nothing to debate here. It’s not a matter of opinion. I stated a fact.”

Ignis’s hand smoothed up the thick of his neck, fingertips tracing the line of his jaw, pinching lightly at his chin to hold him in place as he delivered a kiss to the corner of his mouth. “Is it not up for debate, the veracity of this fact?” 

Whatever protest Gladio had intended to cling to had died when his hand found the curve of Ignis’s ass, and he hated himself a little for how amenable he was to the surrender. “That’s not fair, you know.”

“What’s not?” Ignis asked, feigning innocence as he shifted very pointedly in Gladio’s lap.

Gladio’s hand smacked at his ass sharply, grabbing hold of it and jiggling it for emphasis. “This.” He kissed him quickly on the mouth. “That, too. I mean, basically all of this.” He ran his hands frantically up his thighs, his backside, in demonstration of this fact. 

Ignis laughed. “Eloquent.” 

“Yeah?” Gladio grinned, kissing him meaningfully. “You expect me to think when all the blood that should be going to my brain is rushing my dick right now?”

“What was that protest about being called a caveman?” he asked, saccharine-sweet as he touted his own victory.

“Yeah, I concede,” Gladio announced into the fabric of his shirt, where he mouthed at the jut of his collarbone. “Woof.”

The distinct sound of a key pushed into the lock preceded the swing of the front door, and without a thought, Gladio had hoisted Ignis up and tossed him inelegantly to the other side of the couch, where he quickly arranged himself into a picture of composure: hair smoothed, shirt straightened, legs crossed artfully, while Gladio attempted to think of the most disgusting things imaginable to tamp down the ridiculous boner already presenting along his thigh. 

Noctis and Prompto bounded in, stopping short of the corner they’d rounded to find them in the living room at the sight of them. Noctis’s eyes narrowed in suspicion, though Prompto gleefully threw himself on the couch between them, propping up his boots on the coffee table with a sated, theatrical sigh.

“I knew you’d be here!” Prompto laughed, with something like triumph in his voice, as he tucked his hands behind his head. “Noct thought you’d be at Ignis’s place, but I had a feeling. Anyways, I won! I think that deserves a meal of some sort. Or at least an ice cream!”

Noctis gave one of those scoffing, sardonic laughs. “You didn’t win anything. We didn’t make a bet.”

Prompto sat up, indignance bright in his eyes. “Hey, man, I’m hungry! I’d honestly settle for a questionable hot dog, like, even one with sauerkraut on it—”

“Is there something you require?” Ignis interrupted, standing to inquire with a gravity to his voice serious enough to catch the pair of interlopers off guard. “It isn’t often that you seek me out, so I’m inclined to worry that you’re not here for purely social indulgences.”

“Well, you’re wrong,” Noctis informed him, in that too-grave way of his, the slightest arch of his brow the only indication of amusement in his expression. “I just thought you guys could use this.” He reached into his front pocket for a folded paper, which Gladio received and opened to read aloud.

“ …. A Groupon?”

“Yeah!” Prompto piped up, nodding enthusiastically along. “My mom bought it, thinking it would be a great way to strong arm my dad into taking her out on a date. You know, pre-paid dinner, pre-determined time frame that basically demanded he take her or else! … It was a real good effort on her part, but you know my dad and his love affair with work …” 

Gladio looked skeptically at the paper, lined in exuberant red hearts drawn in Prompto’s undeniably sure and romantic hand. “So why would we want it, exactly?”

“Why not?” Noctis countered sharply, almost aggressively.

Prompto’s eyes went wide, and Gladio watched him scramble to find some more amenable explanation. “We thought it would be a nice change of pace! You know, something relaxed and romantic—” 

Noctis shoved him.

“I mean, relaxed and …. Relaxed …. Yeah!” Prompto added hastily, his voice high with the strain of forced cheer. “Anyways, it’s about to expire, so why let it go to waste, you know?”

Gladio peered at the paper. “Doesn’t expire until next month.”

Noctis snatched the paper from Gladio’s hand, holding his gaze with unwavering displeasure as he pawed at Prompto’s vest front to retrieve one of the pens he kept there (just in case I get a number!). The pen scratched out the date with a pointed viciousness and scribbled in nonsensical numbers, before Noctis tossed the crumpled paper back at Gladio. “Look again.”

“Ah,” Gladio said, clearing his throat. “There it is.” 

“There what is?” Ignis asked. 

Gladio gave a soft laugh as he settled back in triumph, smacking Ignis’s thigh with the Groupon. “So looks like we’re going to Dorsia.” 

——

In spite of all the misgivings he’d harbored over Gladio’s inability to dress for the occasion—any occasion— he had scrubbed up rather well, outfitting himself smartly in charcoal slacks tailored to the gods, a fitted white oxford left unbuttoned at the collar (and only the collar), finished with a surprisingly stylish jacket of a simple cut but in a luxurious silk satin that looked expensive to the discerning eye. Ignis had been pleasantly surprised, enough that he elected not to inhibit or disguise his pointed appreciation as he’d run his hand over the broad bow of his shoulders, the length of his torso, letting his hands roam inquisitively to discern his boyfriend’s surprising sartorial salience. Even now, sat a the table across from him, Ignis chewed quietly at his bottom lip, to Gladio’s distraction, who knew exactly what that tell meant. 

The waiter that attended them looked politely nonplussed to the inconspicuous tension between them, as he waited for Gladio to inform him of his choice.

Distracted (more than normal) over the sight of Ignis, Gladio had paid little more attention than a cursory glance at the menu, reluctantly tearing his gaze from Ignis to finally regard the waiter beside him. “So this … vol-au-vent of braised sweetbreads in a black truffle madeira sauce,” he read off, with a stunted facility of confusion. “What exactly are sweetbreads?”

“Offal,” the waiter replied dutifully.

“Awful!” Gladio barked out a laugh that surprised the waiter enough to preclude any further explanation. “Hilarious. We got a joker over here. I’ll have one of those and a glass of whatever wine you would recommend to pair with it.”

“The sommelier recommends a wonderfully complex white wine,” the waiter recited. “It’s a newer vintage, but boasts an unusual minerality, with sweet notes of peach and honeysuckle, and a hint of sea salt which balances the flavour beautifully.” 

“Perfect,” Gladio said, handing the menu back to him, absolutely unsure of what the waiter had just said. “Ignis?” 

“I’ll have the duck confit with the cranberry, orange and cardamom glaze,” Ignis said smartly, as he snapped the leather-bound menu shut (purely for the indulgent satisfaction of the sound of it) and handed it neatly to the waiting waiter. 

“Excellent choice,” the waiter agreed, nodding before retreating to put the order in. 

“You look … really incredible,” Gladio informed him, once they were alone again, in that indulgent way of his. “If I haven’t said that already.”

“You have,” Ignis replied, a little smugly. Gladio was always full of compliments, and always so genuinely meant that it was difficult to tire of them, even for the most self-effacing. “But I still appreciate the sentiment. And the reminder.”

Gladio grinned, his eyes dropping demurely to the complex spread of cutlery and crockery, and wracking his brain to remember his formal eating etiquette from so long ago. “Do you think the boys have any idea?” he asked, distractedly, his fingers worrying up the length of a champagne flute’s stem. 

“Probably not to the degree they think they do,” Ignis replied. “Noctis certainly has an idea, I think.”

“That kid made direct and un-fuck-with-able eye contact with me, I was shocked!” Gladio laughed. “Shit, I honestly have never been scared of him in my life until that moment. That was the most intent I’d ever seen from him since that one time you tried to force him to eat his brussel sprouts when he was ten. Do you remember that?”

The food came, and Gladio had waited until they were both served before tucking in excitedly, the delighted smile on his lips turning strained as the mastication of his mouth slowed to discern the ungodly texture of the sweetbreads on his tongue: spongy, but also a little grainy, with a strange, bitter aftertaste like bile. 

“How’s your food?” Ignis asked absently, cutting into his duck, unaware of the personal turmoil in Gladio’s mouth.

Gladio waited a moment, too distracted by the ungodly taste to think of a euphemistic assurance for Ignis’ benefit. “Good,” he lied through gritted teeth, voice strained as he pushed the offending plate away. “Yours?”

“You sound wholly unconvincing,” Ignis pointed out lightly. 

“Okay, but what is this texture?” Gladio demanded, leaving off the pretense of being okay about the morsel of hell in his mouth, leaning forward in a conspiratorial stage whisper, like a hiss. “It tastes clotted or rotten, like an over-boiled blood sausage, and then the aftertaste like a colon—”

“You’re eating pancreas,” Ignis supplied helpfully. “It’s an organ. It’s not technically meat, and—”

“I’m going to be ill on myself.”

Ignis laughed, covering his mouth with the heel of his hand in propriety, a peal which devolved into shallow coughs of growing desperation, and then no sound at all as he flailed for Gladio’s attention. “Epi-pen,” he managed to choke out. “Coat. Pocket.”

“Your what?” Gladio asked, jumping up in his panic and rounding the table to paw clumsily at his coat. “Shit.” 

His fingers closed about the rigid epinephrine injector, pulling it frantically from the tangle of Ignis’ coat and instinctively tearing the blue safety cap with his teeth, and jamming it hard into Ignis’s thigh. Gladio’s eyes were trained on Ignis’s form, noting, waiting for the anaphylactic shock to abate with the injection. 

It was a full few minutes of rubbing his shoulder and back and cooing words of comfort until Ignis seemed to regulate, and Gladio became acutely aware of the audience about them. It seemed all the eyes in the restaurant were on them, raking down their backs with invasive, proprietary inquisition. Gladio could feel the hairs at his neck stand at attention, raised in reflexive defense of him and his, and knew that if he disliked the exposure, Ignis would hate it more. “Come on,” he urged, bending to slip an arm around his waist and pull him up to standing. “Let’s go freshen you up.”

Ignis seemed to sink into his side, the strain of his arm, as Gladio walked him to the quiet of the bathroom’s vestibule, sitting him down in an overstuffed velvet armchair. “Thank you,” he said hoarsely, his breath coming labored still. “I’m allergic to a very specific strain of clove. It’s rare enough that I never think to be wary of it. But cloves are often paired naturally with cardamom, I should have inquired …”

Gladio pulled a disbelieving expression, kneeling at his side. “But you have an epi-pen on hand anyways. Seriously?”

“Precisely,” Ignis replied, with the bright ease of one stating something obvious. “One must be prepared for every eventuality.”

Gladio shook his head. “I’m too baffled to be turned on. But listen.” He laid a heavy hand on Ignis’s knee. “Now that this fancy dinner is obviously a bust, what do you say we take a trip down to the quay and eat some shitty burgers and some corner store wine? It’s no Dorsia, but after this little debacle here, I’m not sure that’s a bad thing.” 

A little smile curled at the corner of Ignis’s mouth as he felt Gladio raise his hand to his lips to kiss. “No. That’s perfect. What are we waiting for?”

An hour later, and the two were sitting on the beach with their slacks rolled up to their knees, feet buried like ostrich heads in the sand, eating greasy burgers and taking swigs from the boxed wine like teenagers. The wind sang where it sailed upon the crests of the waves, to caress them like a lover under the inky night sky punctured with stars. It was highly romantic, in Gladio’s opinion, and inspired a particularly affectionate mood in him.

“Ever been skinny dipping?” Gladio asked, a rakish smile on his face that Ignis could not see, but was certain was there by the prodigal cadence of his question.

Ignis turned to him to deliver up the most wry of smiles, wriggling his toes delightedly in the sand at the eventuality of the question waiting to be asked. But still, he played coy. “I think you of all people should know that I have not.”

Gladio laughed, wiping a spot of ketchup from the corner of his mouth and sucking it from his thumb. “First time for everything.”

“No,” Ignis laughed, without reproach. “There isn’t.” 

“Fine,” Gladio conceded easily, wiping his hands off and tucking them behind his head as he leaned back in the sand. “Ever play truth or dare?”

“Is your objective to wait until I ask or a dare, and then tell me to go skinny dipping?” Ignis asked pertly, grinning wide at his bold-faced and unabashed tenacity.

“No,” Gladio lied, scoffing loudly in poorly-disguised offense. “Not everything I do is intended to see you naked. At least eighteen percent of my feelings for you are purely idealistic, intellectual admiration.”

Ignis neatly folded his food wrappers and discarded them in the grease-lined paper bag. “You’re a terrible liar and a worse tactician,” he informed him evenly.

“Be nice to me,” Gladio laughed good-naturedly. “I’ve waited a long time for you. I’m used to taking what little I can get.”

Maybe it was pity. Maybe it was the rush of adrenaline malingering in his veins, inciting him to bad decisions without the rashness of thought. “Alright,” Ignis assented, his fingers already undoing the line of buttons on his shirt. “I’ll indulge you. For the occasion.”

Gladio’s eyes grew wide at the flash of collarbone. “Oh shit …”

There was something ephemeral about the way Ignis wore moonlight, and the quintessence of the stars. His pale skin glowed like a cynosure, like some celestial body whose gravity Gladio was impotent to resist. Even if he’d wanted to. “Come here,” Gladio murmured, even as his hands already reached to grasp his slender face with all the care and carefulness he could muster, to pull him into a kiss.

Their skin chilled by the pelagic winds prickled artlessly, and Gladio drew Ignis to him, their bodies flush with one another. Gladio’s broad hand smoothed down the elegant slope of Ignis’s spine, warm and proprietary, and Ignis folded himself against the muscled breadth of Gladio’s frame with a sigh.

But the sigh gave way to a sharp yelp and Ignis was snatched away from him abruptly, hissing with a writhing, flailing pain that kicked up sand and salt as he suddenly scrambled to his feet to escape the wash of the shoreline. The whole occurrence was so uncharacteristically clumsy of him— desperate even— that it had Gladio following in almost the same manner, chasing after Ignis's limping form with frantic haste.

“What’s wrong!” Gladio demanded, reaching out to steady him with an arm around his waist.

“Jellyfish." Ignis's voice was a strained thing seeping out through his teeth in a hiss as his leg buckled and pitched him into the sturdy hold of Gladio's arms. "My leg. Just above the ankle—"

“What?" he blurted, leaning to look. "Are you sure?” 

“Seaweed doesn’t quite have the same acerbic affect,” Ignis snapped without meaning to, his fingers a vice on Gladio’s wrist. He tested his weight on the leg again and the failure of the attempt only heightened the inconsolable edge in his voice. “Gladio, do something!”

——

The lights of the Emergency Room were unforgiving, ascetic and harsh, casting long, sharp shadows and a preternatural sallow to their skin. Not the first place Gladio would have thought this anniversary date might have ended up, or even the last. And for someone who prided himself on being really fucking good at the art of spoiling a date (as in pampering one), more than just his pride and Ignis’s leg was wounded. 

“I’m sorry our anniversary dinner was literally the worst,” Gladio confided quietly. 

“You should be,” Ignis said smartly, affecting a brightly clipped tone that he was sure would denote his facetiousness. “I fear this might be indicative of exactly how flawed our relationship is, and I can’t understand how stupendously you failed in your efforts to commemorate our anniversary with something momentous.”

Gladio said nothing, and Ignis grinned as he imagined the abject horror on his face, mouth gaping like a floundering carp.

“I’m kidding, Gladio,” he assured him with a laugh, turning his palm up where it rested on his thigh, and which Gladio grasped like a man drowning to a lifeline, threading his fingers within his and holding on for dear life. “If anything, I’m glad for it. I think it’s a testament to the mettle of our relationship, that we could handle hardships the way we did. It’s easy, to get along. In a sense, at least. Relationships are easy when nothing at all goes wrong. Thus far we’ve never allowed anything to mar our happiness. And while it wasn’t the most harrowing of experiences—no death or financial ruin to speak of— I do appreciate your willingness to stab me with a needle and try to make me laugh after. I’ve never had anyone look after me before, and never would I have dreamed anyone would do so so wholly and holistically.”

He leaned back against the steadying warmth of Gladio’s chest. “If I didn’t love you then, I’m fairly certain I love you now. Irrevocably so.”

It had been the first time since they’d dated that Ignis had said those words to him. They’d been friends for so long that Ignis had had occasion to tell him so, but in a purely platonic sense: a reflexive response when Gladio would thank him for something with a pat on the shoulder and an off-handed ‘love you, man,’ or those many nights he’d indulge Gladio’s inebriate enthusiasms and slurred words, coupled with too-familiar cheek nuzzlings. Those instances had never waned in their frequencies, but there was an obvious reticence between them, a palpable precaution to the way they were conscious never to say those loaded words, now that they had different meaning. But Gladio was always sure he loved Ignis, in every rare and rarified form. And to hear that reciprocated from the man he’d loved for all his life was nothing less than a beautiful devastation. 

“You have the worst romantic timing I’ve ever witnessed,” Gladio laughed, kissing just behind Ignis’s ear. “At least I attempted a lead up here.” 

“Then you're to blame for the jellyfish,” Ignis quipped, and pointed to his wounded leg. “And the fact that I smell like an indigent’s trash bin.”

Gladio’s lips pursed then rolled as he bit back a rueful smile. “I’m to blame for us even being together, you wanna hold that against me too?”

“I’d rather hold other things against you, given the option,” Ignis replied pertly. 

“Aw no, you can’t break out innuendos here,” Gladio laughed, circling an arm around Ignis’s shoulder. “I’m weak, you know this. And now I only want to take you home harder.” 

“That sounds like a capital idea,” Ignis said softly, turning his face into the hollow of Gladio’s cheek and kissing there. “I can’t think of another place I’d rather be.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are two terrible references in this piece, candy to whoever points them out and shames me on tumblr! —Astrea


	4. Sensory date night for Ignis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The worst date of all time turns into a sensory date for Ignis, and more

It never quite sat right with him, the careful, meticulous way that Gladio undressed him. Like a hallowed thing. Like some sacred icon reverently divested of its vestments after a high holy day, after all the world had gone away and relinquished them back to the tedium of the quotidian, to the hands of the acolytes who loved them best. There was nothing inherently untoward about the way Gladio treated him, with a respect and reverence that bordered on sacred sometimes. Ignis knew his intentions. He knew Gladio only wanted to spoil him, as indulgent men are wont to do. But the self-effacing Ignis could never quite resign himself to being the center of attention. It was a demureness of character, a humbleness he saw nothing wrong with, not even when he still flinched under his lover’s careful touches, and therefore made no effort to correct.

It also didn’t help that the frantic susurration of the running water mirrored the usual disorderly unrest he felt at Gladio’s assiduous solicitations, augmenting and exacerbating it with every button unfastened that bared his skin to the heated air.

“Be sure to—” he began, his voice already fraught with nervous energy.

“Place the suitings in the dry cleaning?” Gladio finished, amusement soft in his tone as he bent to remove his dress socks.. “I’ve even folded them, just like you like them.” Ignis noted the shadow that blocked the light and indicated that he’d stood, the scent of Gladio’s cologne as he leaned in to kiss his cheek. “Relax.”

Ignis nodded with a nervous smile. His hands alit on Gladio’s where they rested on his hips, a reflexive response from when he used to stop them there, a long-past nervousness that had abated, to give way to the needfulness with which he touched him now, pressing his broad hands to him. Ignis’ hands slipped up his forearms, over the folded cuff of his sleeves, up the swell of his muscled arms, to finally fasten themselves to the bolster of his shoulders. Gladio took that as some tacit invitation, and kissed him, slowly, deeply, before pulling away with a groan. 

“Into the tub,” Gladio instructed, with a swat of his hand at Ignis’s behind, his hand already grasping his to offer his support as he stepped within. The water was a little more hot than he’d liked (Gladio did prefer scalding ablutions), but it proved soothing soon enough as he sank down into the lissome salt soak, and settled himself within the welcoming warmth of it. The chill from the ocean air driven out with the permeating heat, scented with citrus and vetiver and a hint of green tea. His signature scent. Clean and crisp and a little earthy. Comforting. 

He heard the little musical plop of another bath melt added to the water, then the soft splash of the loofah that followed after. Gladio’s hand dipped beyond the surface of the water to retrieve his, immediately setting to massaging the palm of his hands, his fingers. “You ever been on a date that bad before?” Gladio asked conversationally, almost HAPPILY, as though the earlier debacle had nothing to do with him. His hands moved to Ignis’s wrist, thumb worrying circles up his forearm, massaging him further.

Ignis gave a light, sardonic laugh as his answer. “You know I don’t date,” he pointed out  
I’ve been on two dates in my life prior to this, and one was with you to the arcade when we were sixteen. Do you remember? Actually, who can call that a proper date? You told me to meet you at the arcade after my duties were done, let me play one claw game before you cornered me and very gravely informed me that you liked me.” He shook his head with a soft laugh at the memory. “I thought you were making fun of me.” 

There was a contemplative moment of silence, and he he felt Gladio lift his hand and kiss his knuckles, then turn it to kiss inside his palm. “I meant it,” he said softly. “I always did.”

Ignis reached over to press that same hand to cup his cheek. “I know you did.”

And then the inevitable. “Who was the other date?” Gladio asked, a little accusatory. As accusatory as Gladio could ever be with him.

“Are you going to stay out there?” Ignis asked with an exasperated sigh, redirecting the conversation. “Or are you going to join me?”

“I’m spoiling you,” Gladio insisted petulantly.

Ignis laughed, tipped forward to kiss his stubbled cheek. “Come inside. I’m lonely without you.”

Gladio gave a little groan, through which he muttered a rueful, “Unfair!” Ignis felt him move away, the rustle of clothes as he undressed, the revelation of light as he moved to the side of the tub, to climb in behind him. 

“I like this better,” Ignis said gently, shifting carefully until he fit neatly against Gladio’s chest. Those familiar, thick arms wound around his shoulders, and Ignis turned his head to kiss again at the point of Gladio’s jaw. “Don’t you like this better?”

“So who was the other guy?” Gladio asked breezily, in spite of the dogged determination Ignis knew creased his brow.

“This again?” Ignis sank back down, slumping into the water.

“I’m curious.”

“You’re jealous.”

“That, too.”

“Very well,” Ignis sighed, tipping his head back to rest in the curve of his shoulder, an indulgence that Gladio had no right to at the moment, but Ignis very much wanted. “He was a boy who used to deliver pastries to the Citadel. At first it was only for special occasions. But the king took a liking to them. Or rather, Noctis did, and Regis asked for a regular quotidian delivery for breakfast. So he came by rather often. Often enough that I felt comfortable to ask if he had any practical advice to give me regarding viennoisserie. He was kind enough to invite me to his bakery after hours and show me his particular technique for mille-feuille. Once, he invited me for hot chocolate and the croissants that hadn’t sold from that morning. And he kissed me.”

“Did you kiss him back?” The petulance in Gladio’s voice had not ebbed in the least.

“A little,” Ignis admitted thoughtfully, recalling the memory with a slight but distinct softness to his words. Like nostalgia. He caught himself, and reached back to cup Gladio’s cheek in his hand again, drawing him close to rest his temple against the corner of his frowning mouth. “It was nothing, Gladio. I never saw him again.”

“I don’t see why you couldn’t have gone on a proper date with me,” Gladio groused. “It’s not like I never asked you. A thousand times in a hundred different ways.”

Ignis sighed lightly. “You know why. I couldn’t afford the distraction. Neither of us needed it. And I knew, I knew that I would have loved you too much, and too well.”

“Is that supposed to be some sort of consolation?” Gladio asked, behind the shell of his ear, and Ignis could already hear the budding abatement in his voice.

“No,” Ignis said, turning to kiss him sweetly, methodically, until the twist of his lips had relaxed to something that resembled a half smile against his. “But this is.” 

Gladio laughed, amused at how well Ignis had learned to use his affections against him. “Alright,” he conceded, patting his slender thigh in the water. “You win. I’m mollified.” He kissed him once more. “Shampoo? Before the water starts getting too cool?”

Ignis nodded, righting himself as Gladio poured the gel into his hands and worked it nicely into a lather against his scalp. “This is like when we were kids, right when you first came to Insomnia, and you’d come over my house for sleepovers. Against your will, but the king had insisted, since we were so close in age, and would be working together. I really looked forward to playing with you, and you couldn’t be bothered with me. Not even bathing together. You’d never let me shampoo you.”

“I liked to do it myself,” Ignis recalled simply, pushing his head back into Gladio’s careful hands. 

“You hated being touched,” Gladio corrected with a little laugh. “Serious little thing you were.”

“That was true, but only partly,” Ignis admitted.

“I was always real disappointed,” Gladio confided, still working his hair assiduously. “It was supposed to be bonding time, you know? Kids in the bath. And you always kept me at arm’s length. Probably didn’t help I had a crush on you, even then. I didn’t take it well.”

Ignis laughed delightedly. “Even then?”

“Mmhmm,” came Gladio’s wordless answer. “I remember being in school and being real upset one of those silly fortune telling games didn’t say I was going to marry you.”

“When you were six, Gladio!” Ignis laughed incredulously.

“Oh yeah,” Gladio assured him. “I was convinced. Convinced. Pointed a chubby finger at you across the way and said ‘SAVE THE DATE.’ It was madness.” He looked at his hands. “I’m starting to get pruny here. Should we rinse off?”

Ignis agreed, letting Gladio pull him carefully to his feet, and continue scrubbing at him with a dutiful diligence, from his fingers down to his toes. Ignis waited within the hot spray as Gladio did the same to himself, all the while recalling the sundry ways he used to try and court Ignis from the time they were children until really, that very moment. 

Towel dried and lotioned (again, by Gladio’s industrious hands), he let himself be gathered up in Gladio’s arms, held fast to his chest by an arm around his waist as his own arms circled his thick neck. Gladio walked them back to his room, cradling Ignis’s head as he laid him down in his bed, which smelled distinctly of his own scent: sharp, clean marine notes softened by bergamot and bolstered with a hint of jasmine. It was an idle thought as Gladio’s weight settled between his thighs, upon his chest, as he immediately set upon kissing him again. 

It was almost too much all at once: Gladio wearing his scent on his skin, transformed into something distinctly sublime mingled with the earthiness of his own bouquet, the touch of his rough hands impossibly gentle as they ran up his sides and down, pinning his hips to the mattress, the taste of wine on still sweet his breath as he kissed him with a propriety he could succumb to over and again.

“Wait,” Ignis whispered, breaking away from his kiss. 

“Too much?” Gladio asked, immediately backing off, though his hand remained at his waist, thumbing circles against the jut of his hip bone. “We don’t have to tonight. You know I don’t mind.”

“No, it’s not that,” Ignis assured him with a small smile, his fingers toying at the soft hairs at the nap of Gladio’s neck. “I only need a moment. I get overwhelmed sometimes. The scent of you, the weight of you, the taste of your lips, the way you touch me .... In tandem, it’s—”

“I’m an assault on the senses, it’s true,” Gladio joked, pressing his mouth to the hollow of Ignis’s cheek and breathing in. 

“What sound will you make for me, then?” Ignis asked, his teeth catching at the soft skin beneath the hard line of his jaw, his fingertips slipping down the slope of his spine, pressed to the small of his back to anchor him fast. “Complete my devastation here.”

Gladio laughed, burying the sound in the curve of Ignis’ neck. He dislodged himself just enough to kiss an exploratory line up his neck, to the juncture of his jaw, where the tip of his nose nuzzled just at the soft skin behind the bell of his ear. “How about this?” he mused through a protracted sigh. “Marry me, Ignis.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading until the end! This pairing is going to be the death of me. If you're wondering how Ignis is blind in this universe: I decided he went off for some soul-searching training of his own, came back blind, and basically just went about his business like it was nbd. Who's gonna question him? You? Does this sound like a poorly-devised reason? WELL IT IS. Welcome to the front row seat of me flying by the seat of my pants. I hope you enjoy the rest! This will be one contiguous story in seven chapters. 
> 
> Special shoutout to my girl EmeraldWaves for the best beta advice in the world!
> 
> —Astrea


End file.
